The Safe
by Bardicvoice
Summary: What happened the first time Heyes used the safecracking method we saw in How to Rob a Bank in One Hard Lesson, and if everybody knew he'd done it, why hadn't he ever been charged with the robbery?


_No infringement on the copyright interests of ABC and others in the characters of AS&J are intended. This story was originally published in the fanzine **Just You, Me, and the Governor, #23.**_

**The Safe**

_Copyright 2001, Bardicvoice_

"Heyes! _Heyes!_ We're outa time – c'mon!"

My partner's expression didn't change, and I knew he hadn't even heard me. I was used to that. Whenever Heyes was crackin' a safe, he got this _look_, like he was someplace else, like he was makin' love to the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, like nothin' else even mattered. His whole focus was on the safe, all concentrated into his fingertips and his ears, feelin' for the slightest hesitation in the dial, listenin' for the tiniest click of the tumblers. He could kneel like that for hours and never notice his muscles lockin' up or the rest of us gettin' nervous waitin' for the law to show up. All that mattered to him was hearin' the music that meant he'd beaten another challenge, won the dare that he couldn't open somethin' that'd been built special to keep him out.

Well, six hours of tryin' told me he couldn't open this one.

"Heyes!" I grabbed his shoulder and yanked hard. He fell clean over onto his back, shakin' his head after a second like he'd been asleep and was just wakin' up. He propped himself up on his elbows, lookin' puzzled, and then got irritated right quick.

"Kid, what the devil –"

"Sky's gonna be gettin' light soon. You been at it six _hours_, Heyes – it ain't gonna open, and we've gotta go."

Even I couldn't keep up with the expressions that went chasin' across his face. No safe had ever beaten him before. Oh, he'd blown more'n a few when time was runnin' real short – couldn't spare time for fancy work robbin' trains, 'cause stations got on the telegraph soon as a train didn't show up on schedule – but he prided himself on doin' banks clean. I could see how much it grated on him when he told me to bring the dynamite.

Still, he worked quick and professional, like always, riggin' a couple sticks to blow the lock and more below to give a good punch up to pop the doors. I warned the rest of the gang to look sharp, 'cause we'd have to work fast; banks were built solid, but once that dynamite blast went off, the town would be awake and on us in no time. Then I went back to Heyes, and we took cover behind the counter while he lit the fuse. He was grinnin' again, so I figured he'd gotten over the disappointment, and then the double blast hammered us with noise and dust and chips of wood, and we were both over the counter faster'n you could say jump ...

... and damned if that safe wasn't sittin' there tight and dusty as a miser's purse, still closed solid. Heyes burned his hand right through his glove tryin' to yank the door open, but it was locked tight.

"I don't understand," he said, lookin' dazed and lost like a kid again, and I grabbed him and shoved him toward the window we'd used to get in.

"It don't matter, Heyes – we gotta go _now!_"

I hustled him out the window and onto his horse, and we took off with the rest of the boys while the townsfolk were still tryin' to figure out where the thunder came from.

* * *

We laid low for a month after that job, and I was worried. Oh, not about gettin' caught; I ain't even sure they ever sent a posse after us, what with nothin' actually bein' stolen an' all. No, what had me worried was Heyes.

Heyes wasn't talkin'. He wasn't eatin', either, except when I made him. I'd seen him low before plenty of times, but never for this long. You gotta understand, Heyes had more ups an' downs than most men. Oh, he was pretty naturally sunny most the time, but when his skies clouded over, he could get so low that nothin' mattered to him. When that happened, he mostly seemed tired, but sometimes he could get mean. I hadda take him out of Devil's Hole before he'd get himself in trouble with the boys.

I took him to Denver. We still had money from the last job we'd pulled, and I figured he'd perk up in the city; he always liked bein' surrounded by people an' money an' pretty ladies an' blackjack an' poker an' all. It seemed to help a little, but he was still quiet, and if you know Heyes, you know that ain't natural. He talked more'n any man I ever met, most times; most frustrated I'd ever seen him was the once he got sick with somethin' that took his voice away for a week. Now it was like he was sick again, but he didn't care, this time.

And then we walked past a storefront, and he all of a sudden upped and stopped in his tracks, starin' in the window. There it was, big as life, but wide open: a Pierce and Hamilton 1878, just like the one he hadn't been able to open. I saw somethin' change in his eyes, and all at once, he was back with me again, plannin' and schemin' like nothin' was wrong. I knew that look, and I knew what it meant: he wasn't gonna take bein' beaten lyin' down.

We were dressed in city suits, so as to blend in, and I saw him straighten up and give a tug here and there to smarten up his image, and then he grinned at me once quick and marched up to the door, bold as brass. I followed him in and hoped he really was back to form, because otherwise we were gonna be in for it in no time at all.

I didn't need to worry.

He smiled the way he has that makes you just smile back, and I saw the salesman get charmed right from the start.

"Good afternoon, sir," Heyes said in that bright warm honey voice of his, and he captured the salesman's hand to shake like they were old friends. "I'm Sidney Harker, from the Farmer's and Merchant's Bank in Yuma, Arizona, and this is my associate, Mr. Tiberius Clay. We are in need of a safe, sir, and we have heard that the Pierce and Hamilton '78 is the very best to be had."

I tried to memorize the latest name he'd saddled me with while the pleasantries continued.

"Oh, you've heard right, Mr. Harker," the salesman said enthusiastically. "Why, the rumor is, just last month, even the notorious Hannibal Heyes tried and failed to open the one in Culver City!"

I saw Heyes' eyes get dark for just a second, but he carried on so smoothly that I'm sure the clerk didn't notice a thing.

"Really? Hannibal Heyes himself?"

The salesman leaned forward and lowered his voice a bit.

"Well, can't be _absolutely_ sure, of course, but from the descriptions folk gave, some of the members of his Devil's Hole gang were seen hanging around the town before the attempt was made, so who else could it have been? But even dynamite, sir, failed to leave a mark!"

"No!"

"Yes! If you'll just come this way, sir, let me show you some of the unique features that make the Pierce and Hamilton '78 the ultimate in protection ..."

I followed as the salesman led Heyes over to the open safe on display, and I watched my partner memorize and catalogue every little detail, from the padded, insulated box that held the tumblers to the special internal brace that would absorb any force applied from outside the safe and distribute it evenly around the case to prevent any ruptures or warp. It all sounded pretty convincin' to me, especially as I'd already seen this safe defeat Heyes' fingers, ears, and dynamite.

In the end, Heyes pumped the salesman's hand again and promised that he'd be back just as soon as he'd spoken with the board of directors of his bank, and then we were off. Heyes was silent again, but this time, it was his _thinkin'_ silence, and his face was alive with the ideas skitterin' around in his brain. I could see that he was on the verge of hatchin' another brilliant new Hannibal Heyes Plan, and I braced myself for it.

"Outside force," he muttered absently as he walked. "Outside force ..."

He stopped suddenly and turned to me, and his face lit up with a grin that came up clear from his toes and bid fair to split his cheeks apart. He grabbed my arm.

"Kid, that's it! We blow it up from _inside_!"

This wasn't the first time my partner came out with somethin' insane. Most of his plots and schemes sounded that way, especially in the beginnin'; I was used to it. I spared a quick glance around to make sure that we weren't attractin' any attention, and then looked at him sideways.

"And how do we get inside it to blow it up, when we can't get inside it in the first place?" I asked patiently, and he shook his head, dismissin' the question.

"I don't know that yet, but I'm going to figure it out. C'mon!"

I was just relieved that Heyes was back with me again, out from under the clouds of depression that had settled on him after the botched job, so I followed him without even tryin' to figure out where he was goin'. I don't know that he had any real goal in mind. Sometimes when Heyes was thinkin', he just walked, like he was tryin' to keep up with his ideas by usin' his feet. His eyes were bright, but they weren't really seein' what was around him; they were lookin' inside, sortin' through ideas.

Heyes spent the next two weeks walkin' around an' lookin', and then sittin' down and readin' things or sketchin' an' calculatin'. He paid the subscription fee to join a local library, and he spent days there goin' through old issues of a magazine called _Scientific American_, and then he hunted all over Denver for a machine he called a Bryant pump. He had me buy him some quick-dry putty and a clock, and he experimented with how long it took the putty to get hard and how good a seal it made, pourin' water into a box he built with putty and wood to be sure it wouldn't leak. We did a little burglary one night to get us just a few ounces of nitro, a bit of fuse, and a couple blastin' caps that a minin' company on the outskirts of town would never miss.

And then he told me we were gonna hit the Merchant's Bank in Denver. Just us; he didn't want any of the gang to come along.

I told him he was crazy. He just grinned at me, but he didn't deny it. I knew I'd go along with him. I always had, ever since we were kids.

And that's how we wound up inside the Merchant's Bank in Denver at around one in the mornin', lookin' at another Pierce and Hamilton 1878, with no lookout watchin' out for us. Heyes unscrewed the manufacturer's name plate with the safe's serial number on it from the top of the front of the safe, and then he slipped a skinny little tube through the screw hole to get the end of the tube inside the safe. He had me help him putty over every single seam on the safe, including around the doors and around the little tube he'd stuck inside. Then he just sat down and whispered stupid stories while the clock in his hands ticked off forty minutes, time enough for the putty to dry. I kept checkin' through the curtains on the windows to be sure no one was takin' any interest in the bank, but I had to spend most of my time watchin' Heyes. I was worried again, because I figured that if this scheme didn't work, he was gonna be worse off than he'd been the first time he'd missed blowin' one open, and I couldn't imagine him goin' that far down and ever comin' back again.

At the end of the forty minutes, he rigged up the pump, and this time he had me set the alarm for sixteen minutes, which is how long he figured it would take to pump all the air out of the safe, given the size of the thing and the power of the pump. He said we wouldn't need the whole sixteen minutes if the safe had a lot of stuff in it, but he wanted to be sure. That's where all the calculatin' had come in, I guess. I thought he'd have me pump, but I think the waitin' was even gettin' to him, because he really put his back into doin' the pumpin' himself.

Then came the tricky bit, that looked like magic to me. He had a funnel hooked into the pipe tube, with a valve that kept it shut while the pump worked. He had me hold the funnel real steady while he poured the nitro into it real slow and careful-like. When all the nitro was in the funnel, he opened the valve at the bottom, real gentle, and the tubing just sucked it right inside the safe, neat as you please. I didn't quite understand what he said about a vacuum inside the safe and air pressure outside, but I hadn't read that _Scientific American_ magazine, either. I always knew he was a genius, and that was enough for me.

The rest was simple. He pulled the tube out of the safe, stuck in a blastin' cap where the tube had been, and trailed the fuse over the front of the counter. We crouched down, he lit the fuse ...

... and the front door of the bank opened up, just before an almighty boom behind us announced the openin' of the safe.

Things got a mite confusin' in the next minute. Heyes jumped up and looked around, and I heard him laugh in pure delight. Me, I dove forward and grabbed the man at the door, yankin' him into the bank and slammin' the door closed behind him. He was a fat little guy with a silk top hat who spluttered in panic and waved his hands ineffectually around, but couldn't even seem to get enough breath to scream, not that I wanted him to. I wrestled him around and clamped one gloved hand over his mouth just in case, and turned back to Heyes, my gun just automatically in my other hand.

Heyes stood in front of the open safe, arms wide, oblivious to our visitor. Even without seeing his face, I knew he was wearin' that cheek-splittin' grin.

"Heyes! We ain't got time to celebrate – we've gotta get outa here, _now_! Bag the money and let's _go_!"

Heyes turned to me, and even in the dark I could see his eyes shinin'.

"Kid," he said, and then he started to laugh and couldn't stop. I holstered my gun and dragged the bank man over until I got within reach of Heyes, and shook him hard with my free hand.

"Snap out of it, Heyes! We've gotta _go_!"

I could feel him still shakin' with laughter as he raised his hands helplessly at his sides and grinned.

"Kid – we don't have a bag."

I just stared at him. It couldn't've been for long, but it felt like forever, and then the absurdity of it all got to me too. I know I should've been angry – I should've been furious! – but it was just too funny: the great Hannibal Heyes blows open the best safe in the world, and then doesn't have anything to carry the loot away. We didn't have time now to search the bank for its stock of canvas bags, which were far too distinctive to carry through the streets of Denver in any case, so all of this was for nothin'.

Well, maybe not _entirely_ for nothin'. Heyes' eyes had their sparkle back, and his grin was way brighter than the shuttered oil lamp on the floor.

We tied up the banker, whose eyes were bigger than platters, havin' heard me and Heyes callin' each other by name, and we hightailed it out the back window just as the local law came through the unlocked front door, investigatin' the noise. We had a few hairy minutes on the dodge, but we lost our pursuers in the maze of alleys and made it back to our hotel. Not to tempt fate, we packed right then and lit out, borrowin' a couple of livery horses so we wouldn't have to wait on the train. We were long gone by dawn, and we didn't go back to Denver again for, oh, must've been two years or more.

Funny thing is, that may have been Heyes' and Curry's most famous robbery, but we never got charged with it. Everybody knew we did it, 'cause of the banker who'd come in on it at the end, but since nothin' got taken, seems no one ever swore out a warrant for us in Colorado. Fact is, the story went around that Heyes did it just to prove that he could, that he never intended to take anything, just to open the safe. Guess the banker was too scared to get more'n our names: he never said a word about us forgettin' to bring along a bag for the loot, so that part of the story never got out until now.

It wasn't long after that, Heyes and I decided to try goin' straight. Heyes had made his point – the safe wasn't built that could stop him, if he thought and worked hard enough – but he knew, and I knew, that it was just going to get tougher to make ends meet, what with science and technology gettin' better all the time. He figured then he'd always be able to beat it, but I knew it wouldn't be worth the price to go through this kind of thing again, and after seein' him so down and lost once, I never wanted to see him that way again.

'Course, leavin' the outlaw trail had its own problems, and Heyes did lose heart again, but that's a different story.


End file.
